Politics.za: State Has No Idea About JHB Monorail

State Has No Idea About JHB Monorail

Farrel — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:04:00 -0500

Minister of Transport Jeff Radebe says the first time he heard about the proposed monorail between Soweto and Johannesburg was when he read about it in the paper.

Radebe said it was not clear “what particular process” had been followed to secure the contract for the monorail. “I’m as in the dark as you are at the moment,” he told the committee.

Now the federalists amongst you out there might very well be cheering the Gauteng provincial government along, after all what business does the national government have in a province’s affairs. Unfortunately with the current administrations love for central planning and considering that all rail projects are considered an area of ‘national competence’ I guess we can assume the monorail is all but dead now.

Update: Government halts Gauteng monorail

The building of a 44,7 kilometre monorail between Johannesburg and Soweto has been “put on hold”, the Transport ministry said on Friday.

"State Has No Idea About JHB Monorail" by Darren

Thu, 24 May 2007 20:24:24 -0500

Interesting. The guy behind this seems to be a bit ambitious, to say the least. He’s also planning to construct a 64-story twin-tower headquarters near the Bree Street taxi rank.

As for the passenger numbers, I’ve got to agree that 1.5 million people per day sounds wildly optimistic. Even the Tokyo Monorail, probably the most successful and busiest in the world, carries 270 000 per day on average.

I mean, according to the reports, trains will leave every 3-5 minutes in peak times and every 10 minutes during off-peak hours. So there’ll be between 12 and 20 trains per hour at peak and 6 per hour the rest of the time. Most monorails have a passenger capacity of 40 or so, but let’s assume the proposed JHB monorail will be a fairly large one with 150 passengers. That would result in, at most, 3000 passengers per hour during peak periods and 900 per hour during other times. Even assuming six peak hours daily, that translates to, at best, 18000 passengers daily in peak hours. To reach just one million passengers during peak hours daily, you would need 3300 trains, close to the DA’s estimate.

Now granted, these are quick estimates based on info we don’t have yet, and I haven’t taken into account station-to-station transport within Johannesburg itself, which may be where Newcyc envisages most of its passenger numbers. Though it seems they’re betting a whole lot of money on some fairly shaky assumptions.

Nevertheless, a monorail does make sense for Johannesburg. And it wouldn’t need 1.5 million passengers per day to be either profitable or useful. It’s just that in this case, something doesn’t quite feel right.

"State Has No Idea About JHB Monorail" by Farrel

Thu, 24 May 2007 18:56:39 -0500

Yeah I also read it was going to be privately funded. The DA claims that to carry the proposed 1.5 million people per day (750 000 each way) will require something like 3000 trains departing during the morning and evening rush hour.

"State Has No Idea About JHB Monorail" by Darren

Thu, 24 May 2007 18:51:07 -0500

I wouldn’t be too surprised either. Unfortunately, the taxi industry often acts like an officially-sanctioned mafia.

But the whole monorail story is still a bit blurry. I seem to recall reading that the government (either national or provincial) wouldn’t be spending any money on it, but that it would be driven entirely by investment from Malaysia. Is that true? It does seem a bit unlikely, but not impossible.

On the face of it, it does look like a decent enough idea and it would certainly ease the load on the roads between JHB and Soweto. But the costs involved and sheer technical challenge are giving me doubts.

"State Has No Idea About JHB Monorail" by Farrel

Thu, 24 May 2007 14:49:48 -0500

Considering national governments repeated attempts to carry out taxi recapitalisation you would think they would use this to light a fire under the taxi industry.

But if it does somehow get approved I wouldn’t be surprised if taxi-men actually do some killing…

"State Has No Idea About JHB Monorail" by hex

Thu, 24 May 2007 13:38:48 -0500

It’s those taxi-men wot killed it!